"The Glass House" may be a by-the-numbers thriller with the
audience way ahead of the characters, but since Stellan
Skarsgard is the scariest actor of his generation, the film is well
worth viewing. Skarsgard turns a hackneyed plot into a nailbiter,
at least until toward the end he is transformed from a guy who can
evoke terror in his would-be victims simply by acting normal to
someone who becomes a generic maniac and therefore almost
laughable. If Daniel Sackheim ("Law and Order," "The X Files")
directed the entire movie with a Hitchcockian cool instead of
turning it into a teen horror pic in the closing half hour, "The
Glass House" would be quite a respectable thriller, one to admire
for pace, acting and appropriate restraint.

In fact we in the audience might be willing to overlook some plot
flaws that render the film less credible than it could be. For
example after the Ruby Baker (Leelee Sobieski) and her kid
brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan) suffer the tragic loss of their
parents, who crashed the family car after attending a function, the
kids are sent per trust agreement to the luscious Malibu digs of
the Bakers' well-to-do friends Erin Glass (Diane Lane) and her
husband Terry (Stellan Skarsgard). The first thing the adults do is to
assign the two to the same room, although there's enough space
in the glass house (or the Glass House if you prefer) to fit half the
population of the soon-to-be homeless Afghanis. This is
particularly inappropriate since Ruby is a 16-year-old high-school
student and a sensitive soul at that, one who has trouble mixing in
with her more flippant peers in her new Malibu school. Why
wouldn't Ruby, who acts mature beyond her years and in fact
looks every bit a real woman when dressed up in black, question
her guardians about this, particularly when, later on, the adults do
in fact decide to move her into separate quarters?

"The Glass House" is a fairly conventional story about a pair of
adolescents who are compelled to live with virtual strangers after
the death of their parents, guardians who become suspect soon
enough not only for the strange room accommodations but
because Terry, under the guise of taking his new charge to a
party, escorts her to a plush restaurant instead and hits on her as
soon as they retreat to the car. If Terry had his eyes on the gold
mine that this girl represents, would they shift toward the
attributes of the kid's flesh so conspicuously thereby eroding the
young woman's trust? As Ruby, by coincidence, watches an intense
fight between Erin and Terry and, by coincidence once again, happens
to listen to Terry's incriminating dialogue both on the house phone and
in his office, she is certain that she and her brother are living on
borrowed
time and take the needed action to extricate themselves from their
dilemma.

Without Skarsgard, who has excelled in such work as the
remarkable "Breaking the Waves," almost putting Ray Milland to
shame by his role as a drunk in "Aberdeen," this movie would be
forgettable. With him--and with the help of the capable Bruce
Dern as the Baker family financial adviser--the film becomes not
a must-see but a worthwhile entry to the year's commercial thrillers.